


name the stars after me

by gohoubi



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, Lesbians in Space, Nightmares, Pillow Talk, Sharing a Bed, set three years after praimfaya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23358091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gohoubi/pseuds/gohoubi
Summary: Echo goes to Raven's room late at night seeking comfort. She gets that...and a little more.
Relationships: Echo/Raven Reyes
Comments: 2
Kudos: 50





	1. Echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Echo sees some things, and searches for safety from her own demons.

_“You’ll lose them all.”_

_Echo stumbled in the dark, close to crying. Queen Nia’s voice came out of it, just beyond her field of vision. “You lose everyone you love, Echo. You pretend to be closed off to the rest of the group, but you’re scared of losing them. And you can’t even admit it. It’s all your fault anyway. Do you think they’d have any sympathy for you? You killed your best friend. You’re a murderer.”_

You forced me to kill the real Echo. I was a child!

_“A true friend would have taken death with her. Instead I got a backstabbing coward. Do they know what you did? Do the others know they share this ship with a traitor? Does Raven know she shares a bed with a girl who killed her best friend with not a second thought?”_

Stop! Don’t bring Raven into this!

_“Ice Nation do not form attachments, Echo…wasn’t that one of my first lessons? Are you stupid, in addition to traitorous?”_

I…I don’t - 

_It will happen eventually. They’ll know. And they’ll jettison you from the airlock!_

Echo wakes up, gasping, with tears in her eyes.

_It’s not real. She never said those things. She’s dead. She’ll never find the others. She’ll never find Raven._

Suddenly, the small room became even smaller, as if the plain grey walls were closing in upon her. Echo climbed out of bed, pressing the door-open button blindly. She stepped into the hallway, which curved away from her in either direction. Darkness lay at either end.

Which way to go? Murphy and his cavern lay at one end. Monty and Harper’s bunk at the other. Echo had no desire whatsoever to see either of them.

_Just gotta walk. Walk it out._

She set off to the right. The motion sensor lights turned on then turned off as she passed. Tiny paper streamers flapped in the oxygen vents. Normally everyone in the Ark kept to a different sleep schedule, so someone could still be awake. This night, though, the hallway was dark and quiet, every door shut tight. Echo felt like the only person in the universe.

_There are people underground. And Clarke might still be alive._

Echo’s eyes started burning. _That’s stupid. You’re alone. Everyone is gone. Mom. Dad. The real Echo. Roan. Clarke._ She tried - and failed - to choke back a sob. It sounded abominably loud in the empty Ark.

_Nobody but ghosts. And my own damn weakness._

Echo felt her stomach turn, the claustrophobia descending upon her again. Darkness starting edging in on her vision. A window. Outside. A huge glass window set into the wall beckoned, glittering in the moonlight.

The Ark had swivelled around to face empty space. Echo could not see the Earth. The stars glittered, spinning around, leaving white trails on her vision that she could not blink away. The empty space around the stars darkened, descended, ready to swallow her up. Echo felt her waist out of instinct, but there was nothing, no knife, no machete, nothing to defend herself with. She felt her breathing coming fast and shallow then, frozen in place before the endless void ready to overtake her like - 

Praimfaya! That huge, deadly wave of radiation come to destroy everything and everyone she had known. Echo looked up the hallway, _saw_ it right there, the orange behemoth that blotted out the sun and sky.

The wave disappeared then, and when her vision cleared Each registered only one thing - a nameplate, with squiggly shapes she knew said _Raven_.


	2. Raven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven finds Echo.

Raven was dragged out of a dead sleep by a whining noise.

“Eh, probably just an oxygen filter,” she muttered, rolling over again. The timepiece on the wall said 22:34. 

The whining noise recurred again, louder this time and more insistent. “Alright, alright,” Raven muttered as she rolled out of bed, strapping on her leg brace. “Can’t get a good night’s sleep around here.” She palmed the door-open button, and the door slid into its recess with a hiss.

Out of the dark hallway came a voice: “Raven?” A ghostly outline: long dark hair, a tall, muscular body, an aquiline face. “Echo? What are you doing out here?”

“I don’t know, I just had a bad dream and - “ Raven heard a sharp inhale “ - and I couldn’t stay in my room, but - “

“Echo - “

“I looked outside, I looked, it’s too dark, and I couldn’t breathe - “ Echo let out a ragged breath. Raven took Echo’s hand and pulled her into the room, closing the door behind her. She took the taller girl into her arms, feeling muscles tightening and relaxing erratically. “Hey, it’s okay. We’re safe here.”

“You can’t - “ Echo sobbed once, before she managed to choke it back “ - promise that.”

Raven turned that over in her mind. “Well, I can. Everything on this ship is in working order. The oxygen filters are running at 98% operational speed. The water reclamation machine is converting six litres of water per day. The solar panels all work, and the diagnostics report no leak in the environment seal.” She paused. “But that’s not what you mean, right?”

“No, it’s not,” Echo said shakily.

“Wanna talk about it?” Raven shifted her leg and bit back a hiss as a sharp zing of pain went through it. What she wouldn’t give for some tramadol right now. If it even existed anymore.

“Not really.” An inhale. “Sorry.”

“Okay. Come to bed then. We can be there together until you feel better.” In the near-darkness Raven couldn’t see anything, except for some fuzzy outlines of hair, of shoulders, of legs. As if Echo wasn’t even there at all but a ghost that might disappear at a moment’s notice. Raven led her to the bed, keeping back all the questions she wanted to ask. Echo would talk when she wanted to talk. She was like a cat in that way. You had to wait for them to come to you, not the other way around. Echo crawled under the comforter, but uncertainly, as if she’d forgotten how.

“Are you staying?”

Raven slipped into bed next to her, gathering Echo into her arms again. ”Of course I’m staying, you doof.”


	3. Echo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Echo and Raven talk.

Echo shifted. _Weak. That’s what you are, Echo! Azgedans require no comfort from anyone!_

“Shut up!” she said aloud.

“Excuse me?” asked Raven from behind her. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Sorry. Sorry, it’s nothing. Just. Voices.” Echo let out a sob. “Just voices.”

_She’s dead! Why is she still affecting me?_

“It’s alright. I get that.”

_You don’t deserve her, or anyone. Not with the things you’ve done!_

“Can you just hold me?” Raven’s arms tightened around Echo’s chest. Echo ran her fingers over them, feeling the cool skin and wiry muscles that rested there. She felt her heart rate slow down. The burning feeling behind her eyes receded.

“You know the stars have names?” Raven asked, after several minutes had passed.

“Skaikru have names for everything.” Echo sighed. “In Ice Nation, they were just stars and that was the end of it.”

“I’m beginning to think your life in Ice Nation was spectacularly bleak.”

“That’s not an incorrect assessment.”

“You can be both, you know. You can be Ice Nation and also do frivolous things like that. The Ark killed people for stealing a bread roll, but you notice I’m not throwing Monty out the airlock every time he steals my pen.”

“I’ve already lost my home and my people. I can’t afford to lose any more of that.”

Raven took Echo’s hand, moving her thumb on top in concentric circles. “You’re not just that, Echo. You’re not the sum of all your clans. Or one clan.”

Echo shifted away a little, but not completely out of Raven’s arms. “Do you really think that?”

“Yes. I do.”

That would have to be good enough. Echo didn’t have the energy to argue further. “Can we sleep now?”

“Sure.” Raven pulled up the comforter. “See that really bright star?” Echo did see it, a dot of light against a dark dark sky. The Ark slowly tilted, and the star migrated towards the corner of the viewport. “It’s called Sirius. Or the Dog Star.”

Echo sighed. “It doesn’t much look like a dog.”

Raven gave a soft chuckle from behind her. “It’s not because of that. The constellation it belongs to is in the shape of a dog. Sirius is the biggest star in in that constellation so it’s the Dog Star.”

“Sirius? Is that someone famous?”

”No. It is a derivative of a word that means ‘glowing’.” Echo saw that it did glow, hot and white from far away. An ember in an empty void. The Ark creaked. Raven breathed softly behind her.

“How many stars are there?” Echo asked.

“Millions. Billions. Sirius is only one. The sun is only one. So many planets and stars out there. Even if we traveled our whole lives we would never see them all.”

“We don’t even have a working spaceship.”

A short laugh. “No. You’re right, we don’t. Before the first Praimfaya there were huge ships that carried hundreds of people millions of kilometres away in two years. But we don’t know where they went, and we have no way of contacting them.”

“They’re like.” Echo struggled for an analogy that would match. Her mind bumped up against the memory of a picture book she had found in a closet on the Ark. “A ship lost at sea. Right?”

“Yeah. Lost in space.”

 _Just like us,_ Echo wanted to say.

“We’re not lost,” Raven said, as if she could sense Echo’s thoughts. Maybe she could. Echo once saw her diagnose the water generator problem without even taking it apart, just by listening to the noise it made. “The filter’s broken,” Raven had said, and Echo had just nodded, because if Raven had said it she must be right. “We’ll find our way to the ground sometime. I promise.”

“How?”

“I’ll steer the Ark down there. Maybe.” At Echo’s silence, Raven tightened her embrace. “We’ll get down there. I promise.”


End file.
